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Blindness: an asset for journalism﹖ - 19th August 2024

Reporting from the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, BBC correspondent Gary O’Donoghue dived for cover as he heard shots ring out. It was an assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

When given the all clear, O’Donoghue interviewed eyewitnesses to the event. His interview with Greg Smith provided a key account of how events had unfolded and highlighted serious security failures. Smith recounted how police had seemingly ignored spectators who’d raised the alarm after seeing a gunman perched on a nearby roof.

When O’Donoghue, who’s blind, had reached out to grab a passerby, he couldn’t see that Smith was carrying a beer can in one hand and sporting a pro-Trump visor and outlandish orange wig, intended to resemble the presidential candidate’s appearance.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper in the UK, O’Donoghue commented, “I wonder, if I could see, whether I would have given him the time of day … because he did look a bit odd.”

Although O’Donoghue’s lived life completely blind since the age of 8, he’s never let it stand in his way. After graduating from Oxford University, he joined BBC Radio as a junior reporter covering stories in Africa, Asia, and Europe. At the beginning of his career when he was 21, he was told that a blind person couldn’t be a reporter. However, in 2015 he became the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent for the US and has provided UK coverage of the previous 2 presidential elections.

From an early age, O’Donoghue’s strived to overturn the stereotypes associated with being blind. Whilst his colleagues may sometimes help him to get around, he generally navigates effectively with the aid of a long white stick. He finds braille to be a godsend to read quickly and efficiently for himself and uses technology and adaptive technologies such as screen readers and audio recording devices to overcome the barriers imposed by his visual impairment. Such is his ability to adapt these tools for his use that they have become a standard in accessibility.

O’Donoghue is an advocate for diversity and inclusion within journalism and a role model for many would-be journalists, offering the perspective that sometimes “Vision could get in the way.”

Photo credit: Tim Kennedy, CC BY 2.0 and SWinxy CC BY 4.0 via Wikicommons